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"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
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"Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid."

"I had forgotten what fiction was to me as a boy, forgotten what it was like in the library: fiction was an escape from the intolerable, a doorway into impossibly hospitable worlds where things had rules and could be understood; stories had been a way of learning about life without experiencing it, or perhaps of experiencing it as an eighteenth-century poisoner dealt with poisons, taking them in tiny doses, such that the poisoner could cope with ingesting things that would kill someone who was not inured to them. Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in a way that lets us survive it."
Explore more quotes by Walt Whitman


"Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you practis'd so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."


"My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them."


"WHAT am I, after all, but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own name? repeating it over and over; I stand apart to hear-it never tires me. To you, your name also; Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in the sound of your name?"


"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"
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